Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century

393 Pages·2014·10.85 MB·English

by  Steven Conn

AMERICANS AGAINST THE CITY

AMERICANS AGAINST
THE CITY
Anti-Urbanism in the
Twentieth Century
Steven Conn
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conn, Steven.
Americans against the city : anti-urbanism in the twentieth century / Steven Conn.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–997366–8 (hardback)
1. Urban renewal—United States—History. 2. Urbanization—United States—History.
3. Decentralization in government—United States—History. 4. Urbanization
5. Decentralization in government—United States. I. Title. HT175.C637 2014
307.3’4160973—dc23
2013044642
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Angela, and for Olivia and Zachary, too—because of all the cities
we have explored together

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: The American Urban Paradox 1
1. Anti-Urbanism: An American Tradition 11
2. America’s Urban Moment Arrives 25
3. The Center Should Not Hold: Decentralizing the City
in the 1920s and ’30s 57
4. New Deal, New Towns: The Anti-Urban New Deal 94
5. Looking for Alternatives to the City: The Past and the Folk 114
6. The Center Did Not Hold: The City in the Age of Urban Renewal 148
7. The Triumph of the Decentralized City 195
8. Small Town, New Town, Commune 229
9. New Communities, New Urbanisms 277
Afterword: Urbanism as a Way of Life 298
Notes 307
Bibliography 349
Index 371

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As Crosby, Stills, and Nash once sang: “It’s been a long time comin’ . . . ”
This book began on an evening walk with my parents, Terry and Peter, nearly a
decade ago; and while I have called in many favors, accumulated many debts, and
even relied on the kindness of strangers, my first expression of gratitude belongs
to them. They remain models for me in so many different ways.
Lots of things have gotten in the way of finishing this book—many that were
rewarding, some that were onerous, much that was necessary. But none have been
as gratifying as my two children Zach and Olivia, who transformed from toddlers
into teens as I wrote this, becoming more and more interesting, complicated and
fun along the way. I owe my second thanks to them.
It gives me great pleasure to look back at all the help I have received from
friends and colleagues as I worked my way through this project. I have called
upon Kevin Boyle, Saul Cornell, Jacob Dorn, Robert Fishman, Alison Isenberg,
Michael Kammen, Chris Klemek, Bruce Kuklick, Max Page, Nathaniel Popkin,
Wendell Pritchett, Bryant Simon, Tom Sugrue, and Mike Zuckerman for advice,
help, and encouragement. I need to thank Dan Amsterdam, Bill Childs, Bob
Fogarty, and Dave Steigerwald in particular for their generosity with me. My
students Delano Lopez and Patrick Potyondy asked some very hard questions
about the book and made it better in so doing. Nancy Toff, my editor at Oxford
University Press, came along at just the right moment to give me a final push. And
I would not have finished this project were it not for the help from two very able
graduate students, Leticia Wiggins and Renya Esquivel-King.
I benefited from a number of archival collections and the staff at each, includ-
ing the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, the Rockefeller Archive
Center, the special collections at the University of Illinois, Chicago, the Houston
Metropolitan Research Center at the Houston Public Library, the Greenhills
Historical Society, and the special collections at Wright State University.
Long as it has taken, this book would still not be finished were it not for a
grant I received from the American Philosophical Society to support a year of